Posts Tagged ‘no festival required’

March 15, 2016

A Review of the Film The Competition

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet The ego of a starchitect is too big even to fit in his grandiose skyscraper. Nowhere is this more evident than in the documentary called The Competition that chronicles the process of four of the world’s biggest starchitects submitting ideas for a competition to design the National Museum of Andorra. The four architects are Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Dominique Perrault, and Frank Gehry and the movie follows their firms as they put together their submissions. The film gives you a VIP pass into the offices of these starchitects and reveals glimpses of how these much admired creatives practice their…

March 29, 2012

Infinite Space, the Architecture of John Lautner

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet John Lautner was a big man who practiced architecture in big gestures. He could not draw very well, or very pricisely I should say, so he drew with a thick pencil in large, sweeping gestures. He then left it up to his staff to figure out the details. He is best known, among midcenturymodernophiles (a term I just made up), for the Chemosphere House, and next perhaps the Elrod House in Palm Springs. But after having watched the movie Infinite Space, the Architecture of John Lautner, I have a feeling that he would not be satisfied in knowing that…

March 08, 2012

Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for an American Architecture

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet The story of Louis Sullivan isn’t just important for architecture, it’s an important part of American history. He was many years ahead of his time, he continually broke new ground and he was, undoubtedly, an original. His most ardent dream was to establish a decidedly American architecture. At the time he came on the scene as an architect in Chicago in the late 1800’s, the zeitgeist was to emulate European architecture. This young nation didn’t have a voice of its own yet when it came to the art of buildings and it still deferred to Europe to tell it…

April 15, 2011

Alison King’s Visionary Introduction to a Film about Visionary Architecture

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending the screening of Great Expectations: A Journey Through the History of Visionary Architecture by No Festival Required, a movie documenting the crazy, other-worldly, and incredibly imaginative ideas for cities by true visionaries. Alison King, the founder of Modern Phoenix, gave a fittingly inspiring and itself a visionary talk before the film which I feel should be shared with more people beyond those who attended the movie last Saturday. Here it is: “Thank you all so much for coming out for film today, and for helping us kick off Modern Phoenix Week….

January 02, 2011

New Year’s Resolutions for a Better Community

by: Jim McPherson

Tweet Today’s post is by Jim McPherson, a follow up to his guest post last week. He helps us kick off the new year with some resolutions on how to improve Phoenix and concrete steps on how to get started. Thanks Jim!… Happy New Year! Here in Phoenix, the sun is out, the sky is clear, and there’s a slight chill in the air. Not bad, not bad at all. It’s also that time of the year to resolve to improve upon the previous year. It’s time to look forward and to move forward. Last week in my post, “Yes…

March 23, 2010

If You Have Good Taste in Design, You Won’t Want to Miss This Film

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Last week I had the pleasure of previewing the film Visual Acoustics: The Modernism of Julius Shulman with Steve Weiss of No Festival Required at the Phoenix Art Museum. To be honest, and this is a little embarrassing coming from an architect who loves modernism, I had never heard of Julius Shulman before so I didn’t quite know what to expect. It turns out I had been seeing his work throughout my education and career without even knowing it. Julius Shulman is only the most renown architectural photographer of the past century and this movie is a story of…